Saturday 13th August

We have friends who live in Evesham but unfortunately they weren’t around last night to join us for dinner but Richard and I went over to their house for coffee this morning. Jenny and I used to work together many moons ago, now she and Mike live in a lovely house overlooking the Avon just by Evesham Bridge AND they have their boat at the bottom of the garden!! They came back with us to see Mary H and then we set off towards Evesham Lock about 12.30pm. Richard needed to empty the toilet cassettes (yuk!) so we pulled over by the emptying point. I was holding the boat when I turned round to see a black shape disappearing into the undergrowth! I called Millie and she stopped and fortunately waited for me to go and pick her up and put her back on the boat but she was pretty determined to go ashore. If I hadn’t seen her we would have gone off and probably wouldn’t have noticed she was missing until we stopped for the night! I keep thinking it will happen one day – I just pray that it doesn’t. We had lunch on the hoof and had Offenham, Harvington, Matcliff and Barton locks to do. As I have said before you are supposed to use a bow and aft line in the locks and today we realised just why! Jim said that he didn’t need a bow line in one lock and poor Cecilia veered across the lock bashing into Mary H - a lesson learnt!! We had planned to moor at Barton Lock but there were boats on the mooring pontoon but opposite, not on the lock waiting area, were mooring poles with a notice that said “when mooring please moor to rings” – so we did!! We had a very nice tiny lock island all to ourselves. Jim cooked dinner and then we walked back into Bidford. It’s such a shame as I have a cousin who lives in Bidford but he and his family are on holiday in the USA.